


The Authorship Question

by Carmarthen



Category: Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare
Genre: Academia, Aliens, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Gen, Graduate School, Metafiction, References to Shakespeare, Satire, Science Fiction, anti-stratfordians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 04:34:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6105046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Graduate student Krrra, a member of a spacefaring tentacled race of methane breathers, attends an academic debate on the authorship of the famous play, <i>Rmrreo and Jlljeet</i>, which surely could not have been written by the human refugee Benvolio. Things get a little out of tentacle.</p><p>Any resemblances to actual anti-Stratfordians, living or dead, may or may not be coincidental, because I'm lazy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Authorship Question

**Author's Note:**

  * For [drcalvin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drcalvin/gifts).



Honored Senior Professor Hrll’s methane-respirator, a necessity in the unpleasantly high-oxygen atmosphere aboard the space station, had begun to rasp, straining to keep up with the force of ziz exclamations. “...and it's clear that the author of _Rmrreo and Jlljeet_ couldn't possibly have been Duke Eeewwd d’Vrrrr, who was only twenty standard years old at the time of first performance, scarcely out of the sessile planula stage! The characters have clearly been written by a being who understands the existential anxiety of life as a free-swimming ephyra.”

Outraged beyond the point of speech, Assistant Deputy Department Chair Drrrk Jkkbee waved zy tentacles so vigorously that both Hrll and the entire first row of students, staring with all seven eyes wide and both mouths agape, were showered in tentacle slime.

“Well, it certainly wasn't written by a _committee!_ ” zye finally managed to sputter in outrage, spewing fresh slime over the debate moderator, a human who had just managed to discreetly wipe the first round of slime off itself.

“Excuse me, gentlebeings,” said the debate moderator, who hadn't even looked much less silly with a nice coating of slime. No matter how many times Krrra saw them—most of the human minority lived on the station where she attended university—she never could entirely get used to their funny looks. They came in such a limited range of colors, all browns and beiges and pinks, with hardly any ability to express emotions through their skin. Not nearly enough limbs or eyes. And only one mouth! How annoying it must be not to be able to eat and carry on a conversation at the same time. “I'm afraid it's time for audience questions. Yes, er, you, with your tentacle up.”

Krrra could feel her skin chromatophores shifting, trying to help her blend in with the seating in the lecture hall. It was so embarrassing, being shy! “Honored professors,” she burbled, “isn't it possible that Benvolio really _was_ the author of _Rmrreo and Jlljeet_?”

“What?” said Professor Drrrk, rapidly blinking all seven of zy eye membranes.

Professor Hrll had turned a delicate shade of lavender. “Impossible!” zize squeaked. “A human refugee could never create a work of such depth, such genius, such layered referencing—”

“Yes, impossible,” Drrrk agreed. “How could a human possibly understand the intense emotions of the adolescent phase of life?”

The human moderator pointed its two eyeballs briefly towards the ceiling and moved its single mouth a little bit, but stayed the same color.

“But,” Krrra said, knotting her tentacles together nervously, “aren't half the puns references to, er, human genitalia? And what about the playwright Marr Kit? Wasn't it— _he,_ I mean—a human also?”

“Who cares? No one ever performs Kit anymore,” said Drrrk. “He isn't the greatest playwright of an age.”

“But—” Krrra began, unsure of exactly how best to briefly lay out the historical context of the human refugee influx, or the speciesist assumptions inherent in the anti-human argument.

Hrll squinted at her with three eyes. “Are you a graduate student? Perhaps you should read my monograph. And zy work, too,” zize added quickly, when Drrrk’s tentacles waved menacingly. "Although I strenuously disagree with zy conclusions."

“Next question,” said Drrrk.

Krrra was beginning to understand the slime-flinging impulse. But it was better to be the squishier being, so she oozed her way quietly out of the back of the lecture hall. They'd all see when her dissertation was complete. And if she never got a tenure-track job here, there was always human space. She'd heard Benvolio’s work was very popular there, too.

**Author's Note:**

>  **drcalvin:** okay, Rozsa and Benvolio hie off in a cryo-pod and awaken much later on a different planet where they make a living as genius playwrights? and much, much later, the methane-gas breathing literature professors throw tentacle slime at each other in arguments about how a poor immigrant could write such touching stories  
>  **drcalvin:** and wasn't it really a noble six-limbed creature instead of that spacehobo who constructed Rmrrrré-o  & Jllljjlliiiet?


End file.
